Happy Wheels is a ragdoll physics-based browser game developed and
published by Fancy Force. Created by video game designer Jim Bonacci in
2010, the game features several player characters, who use ...
When I began work on the iOS version of Happy
Wheels, I questioned whether or not it would be accepted into the App
Store at all. I found examples of bleeding limbs, gibs, blood explosions
and screams in iOS games, but no one example seemed to put all these
effects together like Happy Wheels does. Also, at the time, the App
Store guidelines were intentionally vague in places, "What is
objectionable content? We know it when we see it." So I submitted our
little game and breathed a sigh of relief when it was accepted with a
12+ age rating.
However, the App Store and its guidelines are living, breahting entities that change over time. Eventually one of our updates was reviewed by someone who felt the violence was not "cartoon/fantasy", but "realistic", requiring an age rating of 17+ (and banishment from the Brazilian App Store–Sorry, Brazil!). We didn't love this as many Happy Wheels players are below the age of 17, but we went along with it and really nothing seemed to change. Goody.
But then the App Store issued an objection which was not as easily remedied: inury to Irresponsible Dad's child. We were always a bit concerned that this might be an issue and if so, how would we work around it? We ended up going with the obvious solution which was to disable injury to the child. Before anyone throws their arms up in angry protest, I suggest you try it. The child can fall off the bike and will ragdoll, but always remains intact. If you find this lack of violence utterly offensive, let us know. We're considering an alternate solution.
Because of the aforementioned changes, it was easy to implement the option to remove blood/gore from all characters. This option can be found in the Option > Advanced Options. This was request made by a few people... very few.
With that out of the way, the update 1.0.6 also includes levels 1-5 for Wheelchair Guy.
I am actively working on the Android version. After other solutions failed, I decided to go with a pure C++ rewrite of the code. This is unfortunately the best, but slowest solution. At this point, I've got the base characters working as well as couple of the vehicles. It's a good start, but it's still a ways off. Sorry about that. I'd give a more specific timeframe, but I would be guessing and probably inaccurately.
However, the App Store and its guidelines are living, breahting entities that change over time. Eventually one of our updates was reviewed by someone who felt the violence was not "cartoon/fantasy", but "realistic", requiring an age rating of 17+ (and banishment from the Brazilian App Store–Sorry, Brazil!). We didn't love this as many Happy Wheels players are below the age of 17, but we went along with it and really nothing seemed to change. Goody.
But then the App Store issued an objection which was not as easily remedied: inury to Irresponsible Dad's child. We were always a bit concerned that this might be an issue and if so, how would we work around it? We ended up going with the obvious solution which was to disable injury to the child. Before anyone throws their arms up in angry protest, I suggest you try it. The child can fall off the bike and will ragdoll, but always remains intact. If you find this lack of violence utterly offensive, let us know. We're considering an alternate solution.
Because of the aforementioned changes, it was easy to implement the option to remove blood/gore from all characters. This option can be found in the Option > Advanced Options. This was request made by a few people... very few.
With that out of the way, the update 1.0.6 also includes levels 1-5 for Wheelchair Guy.
I am actively working on the Android version. After other solutions failed, I decided to go with a pure C++ rewrite of the code. This is unfortunately the best, but slowest solution. At this point, I've got the base characters working as well as couple of the vehicles. It's a good start, but it's still a ways off. Sorry about that. I'd give a more specific timeframe, but I would be guessing and probably inaccurately.
Yet another minor Happy Wheels update
After reading a couple suggestions in the last
news item, one of them was actually a new idea I hadn't thought of that
would be very easy to implement. Another I thought was going to be
simple, but instead was much more complicated... and now I am slightly
mad at myself for spending as much time as I did on the old game. Here's
the changes:
Ok, I'm now going back to working on the sequel in severe, painful isolation... permanently if I can manage it.
As for mobile Happy Wheels, there are several new levels in production... we'd like to get them out for the next character as soon as possible.
- you can now set triggers to be activated by mouse click by setting "triggered by" to 6.
- triggers can now trigger multiple actions per object for most objects.
- selected items that can be double clicked into are now surrounded by blue bounding boxes.
Ok, I'm now going back to working on the sequel in severe, painful isolation... permanently if I can manage it.
As for mobile Happy Wheels, there are several new levels in production... we'd like to get them out for the next character as soon as possible.
Minor Happy Wheels Update
So for the sake of ourselves making some more
interesting IOS levels, I made couple small changes in the flash level
editor. They mostly all involve the harpoon gun:
- Harpoon guns can now be set to a fixed angle of your choosing. The turret will only aim in one direction, and will fire as soon as a human target crosses it's cleared path. There is no path prediction when firing at the target, so the harpoon has a lower chance of being fatal. This will make it easier to have characters jump over a bunch of harpoons without causing instant death.
- Harpoon guns can now be fired with triggers. It is also possible to set it so this is the only way the harpoon will fire.
- Triggers can also be used to activate and deactivate the harpoon gun.
- A little light now signals the state of the harpoon gun. Red is normal, blue is a fixed angle harpoon gun, green means it will be fired by triggers only, and black is deactivated.
- Boost panels now have a variable power setting. They were originally set to 20, and now go from 10 to 100.
